Chapter 356: Through the Fire and the Flames (We Carry Etja) |
Rufio pointed out four of the platforms. “Those will take us towards a Dungeoneering Dungeon.” He shifted on his feet. “That does not mean we will find any kind of control center in such a place.”
“We don’t have much time to experiment and cross reference,” I said, then reviewed the paths Rufio had laid out across all his divination targets. “Two of these lead to the next closest obelisk and overlap with Dungeoneering.” I walked over to check them. “One is Brawling and the other says it can be either Lore or Subterfuge.”
“I have Lore,” said Rufio.
“I can try to copy Grotto for Lore or Subterfuge,” I said. “Neither of us has Brawling.”
“I just have Brawling,” said Joma. “Notty should handle Brawling just fine, too, which means we’d need to split up.”
“Unless we want to look for other combinations…” Rufio said, trailing off as though he thought that was a bad idea.
“We’ve wasted enough time,” said Joma. “Maybe we can meet up on the other side.”
“There’s a good chance we’ll stay separated,” I cautioned. Joma just shrugged and stepped up onto the platform.
“Not much chance that we’ll all have a matching skill that also leads where we want to go,” she said. “This place wants to divide us up. I want to hit some people. Going to the Brawling Dungeon does both.”
“What about your unconscious friend?” Rufio asked, poking his nose in Etja’s direction. “Do you think she will need the skill?”
“She has Lore,” I answered. “Not sure how she’s meant to use it at the moment, though.”
“A golem in her condition is nearly inanimate,” said Grotto. “Unless there is a physical aspect to the Dungeon, such as with Heavy Armor, whatever resides within should allow her safe passage, the same as it would your weapons and armor.” His feelers undulated in thought for a moment. “Cloaky likely falls under the same exception.”
I made a noncommittal noise in reply. I wasn’t a fan of thinking of Etja as a thing rather than a person, but I understood what Grotto was saying. The mechanics of a golem under a stop command came to me the same as any other subject I’d studied, now that I’d successfully ‘borrowed’ Golemancy from my familiar. I had noticed minor differences in how that information presented itself, however. Grotto was more willing to evaluate Etja’s condition as a golem, whereas I was struggling to see her as anything other than my party member. It was interfering with the skill, although such clinical coldness was never something I excelled at. I’d have made a terrible mad scientist.
“Let’s just get a move on,” I said. It was at this point I also locked in my passive upgrade and evolution choices. I felt a strange sensation as Archmage Sovereign took effect, like Closetland echoed through my soul. I’d probably experience some other weirdness with Self-Insert once I started making attacks, but we’d see.
I did a quick check of the status of my party members through my interface, which still displayed their health and resources. Varrin’s HP had swung around some earlier, but whatever he and Xim had been dealing with hadn’t lasted long. Nuralie’s was firmly rooted at 100%, although her mana and stamina had drained here and there. At one point her entire stamina bar had slowly and evenly ticked down over a couple of minutes, likely from charging Hunger Shot for as long as she could. That meant something out there had had a very bad day leading to a quick and messy end.
Satisfied that everyone was handling their shit, I stepped up onto the platform next to Rufio. The Littan was taking deep, steady breaths to calm himself, his fingers drumming along his thigh.
“You good?” I asked.
“Always,” he answered, then met my eyes. “It goes away when we are in trouble.”
I thought I knew what he meant by that but skipped digging into the sentiment. I activated the platform and space began to compress around us.
A few seconds later, something went wrong.
Rather than a wormhole leading away towards the center of the forest, the entire circle of stone below our feet collapsed into a pit. It was a very short pit, and a powerful pull hurled us down towards a portal at the bottom. I hesitated to activate Gravity Anchor, partially because there was some chance this might have been the normal operation of this particular platform. Otherwise, if this was not how things were supposed to go here, there was a good chance that breaking the platform would break the spatial compression that had already begun. I didn’t feel like sticking around in the middle of a wormhole generator undergoing a catastrophic failure, so down we went, right into the portal.
Unlike the tiny wormholes we’d been slipping through thus far, this portal was the kind that transported us instantly on contact. So far as I could tell, it didn’t drop us off inside another section of the forest. Wherever we were, it was dark and lifeless, and the party interface I’d just been checking showed an error message.
[I have lost my connection to the System,] Grotto thought to me, excluding Rufio from the communication. I acknowledged his message, but losing access to the System didn’t have a huge practical impact in the short term. Its absence was still unnerving, and it told me a lot more about the environment we’d just fallen into than the impenetrable darkness surrounding us. The System was ubiquitous in Arzia, and the only place I’d been where we’d been cut off from it in the past was within the void cube where Hysteria had been keeping the king of Hiward.
A ring of blue fire erupted around us, revealing the ground to be a dark, glossy surface like a solid block of obsidian. Rufio stood in a half crouch a few feet away, eyes darting all around the space. I couldn’t make anything out beyond the ring of fire, and before I could spend much time trying to extend my senses into the dark, another burst of fire rose in front of us. It formed into a ball, the blue of it turning pale save but for a thin line that opened into a mouth. The creature rotated its body to face Rufio, the mouth turning up into a smile as liquid fire dripped down between its pointed teeth like a salacious drool. It ran a molten tongue along its teeth, then turned to peer at Grotto, then at Etja, then at me.
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It frowned when it saw me and slowly crept closer. The corners of its mouth turned further down, revealing its bottom teeth down to its sizzling gums as more molten saliva stretched out all the way to the volcanic glass floor. I tried to identify it, only to run into one of the limits of lacking the System. I didn’t even get an error. The ability simply failed to activate at all.
The smiling ball grew close enough that I could feel the fire’s lack of heat. It instead emitted a frigid cold that reached down to my bones and then deeper still, touching on my soul itself. I could smell its breath, like frostburn and gunpowder. It stopped its approach just beyond the reach of my hammer should I swing it, although I wasn’t certain when I’d summoned Somncres to hand.
Its frown went from one of disgust and rage to something more contemplative. It rotated its body a few degrees to take in Grotto again, then back to me, then it disappeared in another burst of cold fire.
A smaller circle of flame spread out near the edge of the ring, like someone had dropped a match into a puddle of gasoline. The obsidian bubbled and hissed as it evaporated under the entropic heat, revealing another one of the Labyrinth’s platforms below. The creature reappeared next to it, the smile returned, just as broad and just as disingenuous as before. A tongue of flame licked out from its body like a salesman’s arm gesturing towards an overpriced appliance. I exchanged a wide-eyed look with Rufio, then walked past him to the newly exposed circle of stone. I checked where it led, receiving a notification despite the System’s absence.
Lost Obelisk
I glanced warily at the floating ball of fire, noticing that the ground beneath it had begun to frost over and crack. Rufio backed away from the spreading destruction towards the platform, quickly joining me. I activated the platform and gave the thing a final look, pressing harder with my Soul-Sight. It had so far hidden its soul from me, but as I pressured it, its smile faltered, then returned wider than ever.
It allowed the barest glimmer of its soul to leak out, and it was the visage that looms at the bottomless abyss of unimaginable malevolence. Within it I saw not the atrocities that it had committed, but those most abhorrent acts committed by my familiar. I felt his cold indifference as horrors were carried out in his Delves and the spark of satisfaction he felt when his torturous designs served their purpose.
The ground beneath me gave way as the platform collapsed. I blinked and the vision was gone. The portal took us away and we landed in a dim clearing surrounded by coniferous trees. I pitched to the side on unsteady legs, just managing to recover before stumbling. I looked around to get my bearings, trying to shake off the visions from the flame’s warped mirror of a soul. I’d always known what Grotto was, although witnessing it for myself was something else entirely.
I could feel his mental touch and the soul connection we shared. He knew what had happened and, despite the callous disregard displayed by the flame’s memories, his apprehension had a vulnerability to it that was wholly different from how he’d been portrayed. I tried to give him some kind of reassurance, although I was reeling from whatever that thing had been.
I’m sure we’d have a compelling conversation about the creature, those memories, and our big huge feelings about it all, but that was one for a later time. It was the type of thing that should at least be done in private, whereas we suddenly had a number of unexpected guests. Souls bloomed into existence at the edge of our clearing, people who’d obviously been waiting around, hiding their presence for some reason. My first instinct was that it was more United, but these were Delver souls, not the weird symbiote abominations of Brae’ach’s followers.
Ten people walked out from the treeline, two full parties of Delvers. At the head of the pack was a Level 26 Gold, a Timan in robes of purple and blue. Beside him were four Level 20s. One was another of the deer-like Timans but two others were Grimvaldrim, the Mittakan giants, and the last was a cowled Deijinon with dark plumage. Behind them was a full party of Level 16 Hiwardians, which was somehow more surprising to me than the diverse group, at least until I saw who stood at the center of their formation wearing a smug-ass grin.
It was Leon fucking Heronwyte.
I hadn’t seen the man since the party in my former mansion when I’d hosted the king along with a gaggle of other Hiwardian nobility. He’d tried to out me as an avatar collaborator and expose me for improperly entering the Creation Delve. None of that had stuck, since I’d countered his admittedly compelling arguments with irresistible charm and a distracting admission of my status as an extradimensional traveler from another world altogether.
While Leon had believed he had other, even more damning evidence to present, it had all turned out to be nonsense engineered by Hysteria. The avatar had placed Leon under some sort of geas that caused him to believe the documents contained proof of my villainy, when they were in fact some kind of rambling poetry. So far as I knew, that mind control had mostly let Leon off the hook after he’d been arrested by my old comrades Guardian Lito and Dancer Myria.
From the look on Leon’s face, it seemed the man’s feelings towards me hadn’t entirely been due to mental fuckery.
Despite Dickwad Heronwyte strutting like he was in charge, his crew was obviously playing second fiddle to the first. It was the Level 26 who opened up a dialogue.
“Sun’s blessings, King Xor’Drel,” he said with a bow. “My name is Ragad Oladl, and I have come here with hopes that I can appeal to your famous generosity.”
I let a few seconds of dumb silence fill the air as I tried to wrap my head around what was happening here. Why had a trip through an evil fireplace’s demi-plane dropped me off in front of a crew of Delvers who seemed to have been waiting for me, specifically? That thought prompted me to check my interface again, and I realized that my party screen was still showing the same error message. While we were in a grove of old growth trees, a closer look showed that its edges drifted off into the same empty darkness of the space we’d just come from. I hadn’t actually left the flame’s realm.
My mind then turned to how unlikely it was that I would have run into this specific Dungeon. Then again, it wouldn't be that unlikely if something else had been setting me up. I wouldn’t put it past the Labyrinth to engineer a situation like this, although I thought it was more likely to involve the Littan I’d been following around through secret passageways. A quick glance around and a scan with my Soul-Sight revealed that Rufio had made himself scarce, either gone entirely or doing a damn good job of hiding.
Before the silence stretched on for too long, I had to say fuck it and roll with the absurdity. I couldn’t let these people think they’d stunlocked me with the shock of their special surprise party, so I ran down the list of Timan names I’d committed to memory before releasing the X-files. As it turned out, this Ragad Oladl guy had a few of his own entries.
“You’re one of Timagrin’s generals,” I said. “The storm-hearted commander, right?”
“I am honored that a man of such notoriety has heard of me.”
“I’ve only heard rumors, none of which would be polite to repeat.”
Ragad chuckled. “Unfortunately, the songbird’s call is already on the wind with the publication of your spurious documents.”
“If the appeal you’re planning to make concerns my release of those files, I’m afraid there’s not much I can do.”
“I’ve no concern with what tea has been spilled,” he said. “I am here on the matter of your MIST procedure.”
“I see,” I replied. “I received requests from your ruling council to allow certain individuals to undertake the procedure, but they were unwilling to commit the requisite funding.”
Ragad smiled. “I am not here on behalf of the crowns, but rather on behalf of the Timan people at large. Regardless, you cannot deny that the price you demanded was exorbitant. Timagrin faces many challenges, and paying such a wealth of diamond chips would be ruinous to our efforts at stabilizing and preparing for further Davahn hostilities.”
“General Oladl, I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with whatever the fuck you think is going to happen here.”
The general’s fake smile disappeared.